


Sirshos'im: A Vulcan Ghost Story

by SpicaV



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Human Culture, Lower Decks, Shenanigans, Traditional storytelling, Vulcan Culture, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicaV/pseuds/SpicaV
Summary: The young crew of the Lower Decks gather together for ghost stories, clever cocktail names, and general shenanigans befitting Starfleet officers.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Sirshos'im: A Vulcan Ghost Story

One of the undeniable advantages of serving aboard a starship was the high holiday count, especially among crews of diverse species. The USS Enterprise was no exception to this almost universal rule. As long as the holidays did not disrupt the decorum of the bridge or officers on duty, all were welcome to partake. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, religious rituals, re-embodiment days, Rumspringa. Any ceremony or observation that was open to celebration was embraced with joy and sometimes abandon. One of Sam Lavelle’s favorite holidays was an old Earth custom: Halloween. Sure, it lacked the dignified drunkenness of the Vulcan Kasa Brewing season or the sexiness of the Angulian Painted Skin Festival. It had neither the solemn reverence of Christmas nor the Klingon retellings of the Birth of Kahless. Halloween was, in truth, cheerfully tacky. 

Sito Jaxa strolled with her arms folded behind her back and a tiny smile on her face as Sam spoke with great enthusiasm—and sweeping hand movements—about the holiday. Times he went trick-or-treating as a boy, the autumn he and his best friend Kashpaw dressed up as a two-headed Giant Sloar. Bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins, cheap costume greasepaint that wouldn’t come off until it rubbed away on one’s pillow. His favorite Halloween ritual was taking an antigrav hayride into a grove of ancient pear trees for a bonfire and ghost stories. Hot cider stirred with cinnamon sticks.

“Then we ate candy and caramel-covered apples until we almost puked.” Sam threw his arms wide and almost took out Commander Riker, who was rounding the corner with Counselor Troi on one arm. 

“Careful, Ensign,” Riker barked, and Sam deflated. Mumbled “yessir, sorrysir,” and missed the kind smile that Troi directed at him as they departed. 

Jaxa, biting her tongue through the whole exchange, laughed like a bird and lay a soothing hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Maybe a little less sugar in your life is a good thing,” she said, her kind voice as soothing as water.

“No argument here,” Sam sighed as they continued down the corridor. He brightened only when Alexander Rozhenko and a Human boy scampered past, dressed as a cowboy and vampire respectively. Each brandished a pillowcase. “Hello boys. On your way to Trick or Treat in the holodeck?”

“Yeah!” The vampire grinned to show his resin fangs.

“They made a real haunted house,” Alexander said, rotating on his bootheel with excitement. Talking over his shoulder as they jogged around the corner. “With Xerian spiders and everything!” 

“Not sure how traditional Xerian spiders are to Halloween,” Sam said, musing in a philosopher’s solemn tones. “In my day it was tarantulas and black widows.”

Jaxa hummed acknowledgement, watching the last pillowcase flick out of sight down the hall. She could indulge in the Halloween holiday with joy, but horror had played enough of a part in her life that she did not want to partake in the gorier aspects of the Human holiday. The occupation of the Cardassians on Bajor and the death of Cadet Joshua Albert still found their way into her dreams and unguarded thoughts. That was horror enough, for one lifetime. She avoided the haunted house set up in the larger holodeck that was reserved for adults; something about a chainsaw massacre and being processed through the Blackthroat Nebula was not something she wished to experience.

They paused outside of Ten Forward long enough for Sam to press his own resin-printed fangs to his cuspids and for Jaxa to place a headband with a jaunty witches hat tilted to one side. She clipped her Bajoran earring to her ear and smoothed her blonde hair. Took a deep breath, ready to brave the party. Social anxiety still welled up in her when she entered crowded rooms. She thanked the benevolent force, whatever it was, that had allowed her to serve on the Enterprise-D, where the hostile stares and sudden silences from her fellow Cadets were replaced, mostly, by overtures of friendship and invitations to departmental poker parties. The few officers who had gone with her through the Academy kept their distance, though a few had approached her with forgiveness for her role in the death of Joshua. They seemed to feel that she had served her punishment and deserved reintegration into the Starfleet community.

The doors parted and revealed a moderately rowdy party, Ten Forward transformed into a sort of decrepit Victorian parlor-Old West casino hybrid. There were crows borrowed from the ornithology lab perched in the window trusses and a roulette table whirring by the starboard wall. A Human skeleton, 3D printed of course, sat in one of the chairs and smoked a dry ice cigar, black banners of crepe hung down, and a fake spiderweb had been stretched over the back of the bar, with the mood lighting glowing ominous shades of red. Classical music in minor key slunk out of the speakers. Several bowls of candy sat dotted among the rich spread of foods and drinks that topped the bar. Nurse Ogawa already stood next to Taurik. She held a fluted glass of tri-colored liquid, yellow at the base, orange in the middle, and a creamy white at the top.

“What is that?” Jaxa asked, Sam having gone over to say hello to two lieutenants from ops. A rousing cheer went up from the roulette table as someone from Engineering won the pot.

“It’s a Candy Corn cocktail. Fruit and synth-rum. Sweet, not like that awful waxy candy,” Alyssa said, taking a sip with a kittenish smile made all the more cute because of the cat’s ears she had clipped into her black hair. 

“I do not know awful wax candy,” Jaxa said, just as she fastened her eyes on a bowl of the stuff. Sure enough, tiny candy triangles the length of the pad of her finger. Waxy sheen, looked like individual kernels of corn yanked from a candlestick cob. She wrinkled her nose and tipped a finger at Ben for her usual. He tossed her an affectionate grin and bent to pour a hard firewine. “What are you tonight, Taurik?”

The Vulcan stood with his drink in his hand and back ramrod straight. Yellow and black wings spread from his shoulders. “A Papilio rutulis, a western tiger swallowtail butterfly.” He gave a wry glance about Ten Forward. “I believe Sam has ‘taken the mick’ with me; he recommended the wings. Everyone else seems to be dressed up as something eldritch or emulating traditional Halloween iconography.”

“I think you look adorable,” Alyssa said, giggling and taking another sip of her Candy Corn. Jaxa was not so certain that the rum was synth. Taurik gave the nurse a look of subdued affection. 

“Taurik, how’s my favorite caterpillar?” Sam said, joining them with a toothy grin and a devilish wink. 

“I am a butterfly,” Taurik corrected, deep voice deadpan as usual. He took a dainty sip of the green liqueur in his glass.

“Jaxa, a Vampire Drop, and Sam, a Hades Wink,” Ben had appeared, offering them their cocktails on a tray shaped like a bat. His hair was bright orange. “They’re just your usuals with spooky names added. Cool?”

“The coolest,” Sam said, baring his fangs. “You coming to mine and Taurik’s later?”

“The second I’m off shift. See you at 23:00.” 

“You still bringing That Special Bottle that you keep under the counter?”

“Monty Scott Scotch Whiskey, only the finest.” Ben almost purred with self satisfaction. He had traded a bottle of Riesling grand cru for it and felt he had come out the victor. “Until then, enjoy the party.”

***

“...ah, the Knight of Swords represents you. Swords are the element of air, they are active, masculine, a hot and dry wind. The Sword suit represents Gemini, the Twins. The Knight in particular is a quick thinker, a problem solver.” Alyssa read from the small, leather-bound tarot book that had been roughed up to resemble an antique. Inside, the electronic screen glowed faintly blue. Taurik gave her a dry look, one eyebrow raised. She giggled again and looked up at her subject. “You have to admit the description is uncanny.”

“Perhaps, but Ben’s was too far off for my cards to describe anything but coincidence.”

“You’re right, the Fool doesn’t exactly represent Bennie,” Jaxa said, leaning into his shoulder. 

“Hey, the Fool is a wanderer who lives in the moment. Purity of heart and action. That’s exactly my style,” the bartender protested in a philosophical tone reminiscent of Guinan’s at her most mysterious. 

“What’s the rest say?” Sam scooted closer to the table, draped in a violet cloth of crushed velvet. A crystal ball—really just a glass paperweight souvenir from Toronto—gleamed at Alyssa’s elbow. Someone had lit a cone of the v’lil incense that Taurik favored, and candles flickered beneath the replicator panel. 

“Hm. The present. Six of Cups! Cups are emotion and creativity. Element of water, naturally. The Six of Cups represents nostalgia, family, siblings, ancestors. Gratification. Maybe Vorik will call you with news of his commission, eh?” Alyssa smiled to herself and reached for the final card. “Next comes the future of you and this Six of Cups aspect.”

Nine of Swords. Blades plunged into an image of despair and ruin. Jaxa and Ben gasped softly. Even Taurik shifted a little in his seat. 

“Hoo boy,” Sam said, smiling a bit too broadly. The whiskey was going to his head. Jaxa looked down at her own cup. Half empty. “Poor Taurik.”

“Ah,” Alyssa hesitated, bent her head to her book. “Nine of Swords. Mental anguish and suffering, cruel loss, parting ways. Nightmares. I’m sorry, Taurik, this kind of threw cold water on everything.”

“You were not the one who chose the cards. I did,” Taurik said, smoothly reintegrating his three cards back into the deck. Alyssa took them and slipped the deck into the old medibag she used to carry personal belongings. “I calculate the odds of your cards predicting my future as exceedingly slim; sixty-three thousand, nine-hun—”

“I’d take those odds,” Sam said, rising for another round. Ben poured it with a theatrical flourish, raising and lowering the whiskey bottle over Sam’s Caitian crystal tumbler without spilling a drop. “What next?”

“You’re the host,” Jaxa said, drawing her witch headband off and kneading at her scalp. Wished she had some of Alyssa’s cute kitty ears or Ben’s hairspray. Maybe Taurik would let her borrow his wings; he had left them on the curiosity shelf above the beds. 

“Ghost stories?”

“I’m game,” Ben said, opting for ice water at the replicator. Jaxa held her hand up and asked for hot deka tea, honey, no milk. 

When they had all settled Sam called for the computer to dim the lights 100%. Only the candles cast their dancing light, warm and intimate as the five friends sat back or lounged, Alyssa cross-legged on Sam’s bed and Taurik sitting the same on his own. Ben put an arm around Jaxa’s shoulders and she cuddled in on the setee. Liked the smell of lemon peel left on his skin after a night of tending bar. 

Sam procured a box light and held it under his chin. Shadows streaked up his face and made him look devilish as he told the story of The Man with the Golden Arm, the Bloody Prom Dress, and That One Back Road in Montana. “Last one’s a true story, I swear. Happened to my uncle Louis, up by the Canadian border.”

“What’s a ‘pick-up truck’?” Jaxa asked. 

Ben went next, telling a long and twisting story about the Skinwalkers of the southwestern desert. Alyssa demurred to tell a story. Jaxa was content to listen.

“How ‘bout you, Taurik?” Sam tossed the light box at his roommate, who caught it with his accustomed uncanny precision. “What are Vulcan banshee like?”

“Vulcan has no banshee.”

“No ghosts?” 

“I did not say that.” Taurik thumbed the light box off and sat with his hands resting on his knees. Back ramrod straight, of course. “Vulcan legends about spirits and the dead are common. Near my own home of Raal there is legend of a sirshos’im, a ‘soul eater.’”

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that,” Jaxa said, with her birdlike laugh fluttering around the warm room. Five bodies, six pillar candles, and a Vulcan’s love of heat made for close quarters. Literally. The room was meant for two ensigns; five gentlebeings strained the Galaxy Class fire code. She felt content, in spite of the grim subject. Ben’s hand on her shoulder was a lovely weight.

“It is fortunate then, that the sirshos’im is only legend.”

“What’s it do?” Sam, considering another tumbler of whiskey, congealed when he saw Taurik’s warning look. The Vulcan’s expression did not change, but he managed to warn Sam off of becoming too intoxicated. Who knew how Vulcans did that anyway.

“The sirshos’im wanders in the desert, looking to waylay travellers. In your Human tradition the equivalent is the will-o’-the-wisp, or ignis fatuus. Fool’s fire, from the Medieval Latin. We now know the phenomenon to be chemiluminescence, produced by organic matter decaying in swamps. On Vulcan, where marshes are rare, the phenomenon is likely bioluminescence from the ha’ravot insec—”

“Do all Vulcans tell ghost stories like this? ‘Oh, the poltergeist phenomenon is likely the result of subterranean earthquakes creating S-waves in the semi-crustial shaky-uppy zone.’”

Again, Taurik stared at Sam with a neutral expression somehow filled with exasperation. There was also a gleam of humor in his eyes, a silent sort of laugh at which Vulcans were masters. “Blow out all but one candle, Sam.”

“Now you’re talking,” Sam grinned and knee-walked to the candles. Left one flickering, lonesome against the wall.

Taurik, deep in shadow, spoke with his face outlined by the fitful orange light. 

“On the shores of the Voroth Sea lies the city of Raal, where I was born. When I was a child I took my Kahs’wan, a maturity trial, in the Desert of Shiri’tal. My brother Vorik, who is twenty minutes my junior, was taken several kilometers to the east in the same desert, so that we would not be able to aid each other during the trial. The Kahs’wan is always taken alone. I had a lipau-style knife and a length of rope, the clothes on my shoulders and a canteen. Nothing else; anything that I would need to acquire I must find or create on my own. 

“The Desert of Shiri’tal is a volcanic caldera basin with many hot springs and geysers, not unlike your Yellowstone in North America, Sam, or your onsen in Japan, Alyssa. But whereas Yellowstone is in a temperate-zone ecosystem with a Class I airshed, the Shiri’tal is a rhyolitic desert, poor in vegetation. Dust and particulates blow on the high plains; the Vulcan inner eyelid is essential for survival here. Though the Shiri’tal is prohibitive to large fauna like the le-matya, there are smaller reptiles with equally venomous bites. I chose a path that would take me through the outer rim of the caldera, a longer route but one which would provide me with more opportunity for water and shelter from the midday sun. The trade-off was that the Kahs’wan would take an extra day and I chanced nests of venomous shatarr lizards. 

“Everything went well until the third day, when my course had to change. An earthquake trembled through the region and caused a small rockslide. I descended into the travertine valley below and walked through the cool evening. Steam rose from each of the hot spring pools and obscured my way; in the past my people called these Ghost Dancers. The billows of steam were said to be the souls of the rotting dead, trapped by the sirshos’im. The smell of sulphur was overwhelming at times, but I was accustomed to this. 

“During the day the pools are considered beautiful. They shimmer in shades of turquoise, copper, peridot green. The deeper pools shine like sapphires. But what is beautiful during daylight can be treacherous in the dark; many of these pools roil at temperatures near 94.45 Celsius. To fall into one is to guarantee a swift but agonizing death. 

“Night overcame me just as I was walking over a sinter bridge of an extinct pool. I had been sleeping during the day to avoid the sun and travelling at night, but here I must reverse my course. T’Kuhl was near her darkest and did not provide enough light to navigate by. The sinter was rough but at least it was sheltered and raised enough that carbon monoxide pooling was unlikely. I took off my wool cloak and lay down upon it for meditation. A nearby fumarole hissed and growled like a kruulira cat and kept me from focusing well; I was only a child, halfway through my seventh year.”

“You were only seven when this went on?” Sam sat up from where he had lounged at Ben’s feet. “I would have thought you’d be at least fifteen.”

Alyssa almost shook her head in sympathy for the small child that Taurik had been during the Kahs’wan but managed to still her movement. Vulcan ways were not her ways, and the Vulcan children she had met were at once both childlike and better disciplined than she herself had been at their ages. She caught Sam’s eye as he and Taurik bickered in good-natured debate. The Human man shrugged, conceded. 

“Please continue, Taurik,” Jaxa said and sipped her tea. Watched the steam curl, thought of the Ghost Dancers, how small Taurik and his brother would have been. She couldn’t quite picture him as a child because of his reserved Vulcan stoicism, so she imagined him as he was, only smaller. She smiled at her low-key reflection, wavering in the deka.

“Thank you.” Taurik resettled, keeping his dark eyes on Sam like a stern parent, though fondness softened his severe expression. “I listened to the fumarole and watched the Dancers in the dark. As I was lying there I saw a shape flitting through the steam. It was lit faintly violet, and I thought it might be one of the other children on the same Kahs’wan. We are not allowed to speak to one another, and cooperation is forbidden save for instances of injury or emergency. Electronic lights are not also not allowed, but I thought that perhaps that one of the others had fastened a lamp of some sort out of a berdal horn and fat from carrion. 

“The light flickered out and reappeared, humping closer through the hot springs. I sat up, all of my attention on the light and who might be carrying it; just as I thought it would clear the steam billowing from the nearest pool the light vanished, flickered to light again, farther back than where it had been. This happened several times, and it occurred to me that I might be hallucinating from volcanic gasses escaping from the fumarole. I rose, dressed, and walked on. Slowly, so that I would not stumble or approach a pool too closely; sinter crust can be thin, and falling into a pool was possible. As I walked the light seemed to be leading me on down the same path that I had chosen. I changed course, not wanting to encounter another child.

“The sirshos’im legend occurred to me as I walked, and I remembered the story of how the soul-eater would lead a person to a roiling pool that did not yet contain a soul, hypnotize the person with the light, then rush up behind them to paralyze them with a strike to the spine, low, at the small of their back. The sirshos’im would then push them into the water to drown, trapping their soul. Sometimes the sirshos’im would use a damned soul’s body to do its evil bidding, and the body would reassemble itself from the spring, coming together and appearing whole, save for a blood-mark over their spine where the sirshos’im had struck them. Illogical, but Vulcans in the ancient past created stories to rationalize natural phenomena, just as Humans and Bajorans did in earlier centuries. I suspect that the legend evolved out of the sacrifices that had been made to the pools in earlier millennia.”

Taurik sat in silence for a long while, then rose and went to the replicator for a cup of tea.

“That’s it?” Sam asked.

“That is all that occurred. I completed my Kahs’wan, Vorik completed his, then we went home.”

“So what do you think the light was?” Jaxa asked, leaning forward. Eyes shining. 

“As I said, I had thought it was another child who had fashioned a rudimentary oil lamp until it started to behave in an illogical manner. Now I believe the light was simply a swarm of bioluminescing ha’ravot, akin to Terran fireflies or Bajoran littet moths.”

“What a let-down.” Sam stood and nudged Taurik just as he was about to take a sip of his bedtime tea. “You could have made up an ending with the sirshos’im screaming or throwing a rock or tying your bootlaces together, something.”

“I cannot fabricate reality,” Taurik said with a demure sip of his tea. 

The others began to go back to their quarters, Alyssa hugging Sam and Jaxa chancing a kiss on Taurik’s cheek. He gazed back at her with one of the non-smiles that warmed his eyes and bid her goodnight. Ben took the almost-empty bottle of whiskey, promised Sam that they could raise a toast with the last the next evening. 

“Hey, thank you for telling a story,” Sam said, as he and Taurik straightened their quarters. “I don’t mean what I say, I just got to rib you a bit.”

“I believe I understand. A Human ritual used to connote friendship, is it not?”

“Exactly that.” Sam smiled and reached for his robe. “I’m gonna use the sonic. You?”

“Not tonight. I showered this morning,” Taurik said, standing at the end of his bed and turning his back to Sam. 

He usually undressed in privacy, succumbing to a lingering sense of Vulcan modesty that he had never been able to shed. Tonight, just as Sam was about to duck inside the head, Taurik took off his tunic and stood naked to the waist. A small green mark lay against the small of his back, just over his spine. Sam did a double take, gasped, and shook his head, letting the pneumatic door shut between him and his roommate. Missed the small smile that Taurik allowed himself as he stepped from his uniform trousers. The mark had been there at his birth. His mother T’Sara had used it to tell him and Vorik apart, so alike were they as infants. His only regret about this night was that he wished he could have seen Sam’s face when he saw it.


End file.
